Gender and Sexuality in Social Care

1
Gender and Sexuality in Social Care

• Jacqueline O Toole
• Institute of Technology, Sligo
• Equality and Social Inclusion in the 21st Century
• Belfast 2006

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Underlying assumption

• As gender is implicated in all social processes
  and spheres, so too is it implicated within
  social care practicesocial care practice is a
  gendered sphere

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Context of discussion

• Social Care conceptualised as an emerging
  profession?
• Meaning of care is contested
• Transformation of intimacy within intimate
  situations/moments
• Anti-oppressive practice
• Feminisation of social care practice

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What is Care?

• At a policy level
• Care is understood as referring to the provision
  of facilities and carrying out of tasks for those
  unable to do so my emphasis for
  themselvescarers are those paid to do these
  tasks (Orme, 200193)

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What is Care?

• Distinction routinely drawn between paid and
  unpaid caring workbetween informal and formal
  care (Lynch and McLaughlin, 1995, Feder Kittay,
  1999)

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What is Social Care Practice?

• A broad spectrum of specialised interventions in
  peoples livespivotal in the delivery of a range
  of residential, day and community social
  servicesand other support services for
  marginalised groups (Gallagher and O Toole,
  1999)

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What is Social Care Practice?

• Social care is a profession where people work in
  partnership with those who experience
  marginalisation or disadvantage or who have
  special needs (sic)a profession committed to the
  planning and delivery of quality care and other
  support services for individuals and groups with
  identified needs (IASCE, 2005)

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What is Social Care Practice?

• The role of the social care practitioner is
  becoming increasingly complex with an emerging
  body of literature referring to the process of
  reflection as being central to constructivist
  learning (Graham and McGarry, 2002).

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What is Social Care Practice?

• Process of negotiation amongst relevant social
  actors for a meaningful and acceptable role
  within the occupational structure of the social
  professions (Gallagher and O Toole, 1999)

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Gender

• The process of gender attribution is itself a
  social process that varies from one social
  setting to another
• Inevitability of sex and gender may no longer be
  a certainty

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Gender and Inequality

• Connell (1987, 1995, 2005)
• hegemonic masculinity, the patriarchal dividend
  and the gender order
• O Connor (1998), Walby (1990)
• articulate accounts of Irish and British society
  that clearly demonstrate the many ways in which
  society is organised at an overall level to
  benefit men

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Sexuality

• Sexuality as is socially constructed must be
  understood as being linked to particular
  understandings of femininity and masculinity and
  to gender social relations and power

13
Sexuality and Social Care

• Expressions of sexuality may occur in the sharing
  of life-space through touch, looking, physical
  stance, language usage, clothes and hexis

14
Sexuality and Social Care

• Discussions of sexuality within social care take
  place within a discourse that places regulation,
  protection and control to the forefront

15
Anti-Oppressive Practice

• Identify the factors that underpin oppression and
  discrimination especially as they relate to
  social care theory and practice
• Explain the concepts and issues across the
  various forms of discrimination including sexism,
  homophobia, racism, ageism, disabilism and so
  forth

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Women and Men as Social Care Practitioners

• In the first instance both work within gender
  constructed social relationships
• In that
• Constructions of femininity and masculinity
  explicitly and implicitly permeate the provision
  of care

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• If we are to attract more men in to the field,
  we have to find a way to describe and advertise
  the experience of men in the field in a manner
  which is attractive to men. We need to be
  talking about what it means to be male in this
  field, and we need to be able to explain, in our
  advertisements, why we need men in the field. We
  need to create the conditions in our college
  programmes which will support men in being
  different (McElwee, 2003)

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Key Questions

• Is social care practice perceived as a natural
  and unquestioning occupational choice for women
  and if so does this mean we dont have to worry
  about making it attractive to them as the numbers
  will always be there?
• How can men begin to address their positions in
  social care that takes account of their
  privileged positions as men in wider society?

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Key Questions

• Does masculinity turn out to be a boon for men
  when they enter non-traditional occupations, as
  qualities associated with men become more highly
  valued than those associated with women even in
  predominately female jobs?
• We need to interrogate masculinity to ascertain
  whether there are other advantages of being male
  in social care practice, such as greater access
  to promotion, achieving more attention because of
  their small numbers, and being rewarded for an
  ability to express feelings and emotions which,
  it would seem, are taken for granted in women?

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Key Questions

• What does it mean to be a woman in social care?
• We need an interrogation of femininity to
  establish if women also bring to this gendered
  sphere, the particularities of their gendered
  experiences in wider society.

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Key Questions

• What discourses of femininity and masculinity
  exist in the training of social care
  practitioners and in the actual social care
  environment?
• What is the impact of these discourses on
  individual and collective practices?

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The Social Context of Social Care

• As reflective practitioners, care workers must be
  aware of how their interactions might be
  underpinned by sexism and be connected to gender
  and power
• Such interactions must also be understood in the
  context of social class, sexuality, race,
  ethnicity, disability and attendant power
  relations